Uniter markdown plugin (experimental)

Implements an inline Markdown syntax in PHP for Uniter.

What?

Please note that you probably shouldn't use this in production. It's intended to demonstrate the unified platform config feature of Uniter only. That said, feel free to contribute any improvements that still fit within that (admittedly contrived) use-case.

In reality, you'd probably want to avoid extending PHP's syntax for this particular feature, or at least perform a PHP source-to-source transpilation. That said, PHP currently lacks a source-map equivalent, so you'd probably have to bunch your generated code up onto a smaller number of lines in order to maintain the correct line numbers after transpilation.

I understand, but how do I use it?

Install the dependencies

$ npm install --save uniter uniter-markdown-plugin

Create your unified platform config

uniter.config.js:

module.exports = {
    'plugins': [
        // Import this plugin itself
        require('uniter-markdown-plugin'),
    ],
};

Use it in a script

Note that interpolation works too:

my_markdown.php:

<?php

$name = 'Anastasia';
$where = 'here';

$myMarkdownTree = markdown {
### My intro
- Firstly, hello *$name*, how are _you_?
- Secondly, $where did you go?
};

return $myMarkdownTree->toHtml();

Run it

Note that the uniter.config.js file will be detected automatically, assuming it is in the same folder as your entry script:

$ uniter my_markdown.php

Limitations

Not designed for production use!

As above, I don't recommend you use this plugin in production - but feel free to experiment!

"Free" special characters are not consistently supported

Something like the following:

<?php

$myMarkdownTree = markdown {
    My plain text with * an asterisk.
};

will raise a PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ... error. To overcome this, you'll need to backslash-escape the special character, like so:

my_markdown.php

<?php

$myMarkdownTree = markdown {
    My plain text with \* an asterisk.
};

print $myMarkdownTree->toHtml();

- this should then give the desired result. Note that the backslash will be removed:

$ uniter my_markdown.php

My plain text with * an asterisk.

Keeping up to date

• Follow me on Twitter for updates: https://twitter.com/@asmblah